Migrate to the hybrid cloud with IBM Spectrum Storage

By now it’s clear that companies are headed toward a cognitive infrastructure delivered through a cloud platform. Organizations are looking for a platform that integrates the local infrastructure with the hybrid cloud — the union of public and private clouds in a safe, efficient and transparent manner.

Why is a hybrid cloud so important? To combine the best of the private, on-premises infrastructure world with the cloud world. To improve flexibility and in turn reduce costs using the hybrid cloud. This is a major challenge for IT teams. There are many vendors in the market who claim to have the hybrid cloud solution but only offer closed products or partial solutions.

IBM Spectrum Storage can offer a complete, multivendor hybrid cloud solution. It provides a series of software tools for management and optimization of infrastructure that allows a company to put its data where it is most convenient: in local storage devices and in a private or public cloud. Most importantly, it allows this data to be moved and be accessible to applications safely and consistently.

What does Spectrum Storage do? It allows you to optimize and manage your storage infrastructure through software defined storage applications, giving flexibility for the management of block storage, files and objects. This allows you to use devices from any vendor and place them either on premises or in the hybrid cloud. Most important, you can connect them safely, efficiently and transparently.

Here are some examples of how the IBM Spectrum Storage family can enable and optimize the hybrid cloud:

IBM Spectrum Scale allows a file system to transparently extend between local and public cloud devices. An application doesn’t need to know where the data is because it can be found with a unique universal name anywhere in the cloud. The data is moved between the local environment and the cloud with an information lifecycle management (ILM) rule. Frequently used data can be stored in local flash devices while data that has not been accessed in six months can be automatically transferred to cloud storage, which is much more economical.

IBM Cloud Object Storage allows cold video or archive data to be stored in multiple cloud sites, providing security and redundancy. Cloud Object Storage combines private and public clouds to connect transparently. IBM software handles the synchronization. All you need to know is the name of the objects used in your work. Local or remote users, or a client that connects through the cloud, can access a video that was just stored or rented.

Finally, IBM Spectrum Protect lets you make backups and archive data. It can be used as a private application or hired as a service. Data backup or archiving can also be placed in different repositories. The most recent backups can be stored on flash devices for a quick recovery in case of an emergency. The oldest backups can be transferred to a more economical repository in the cloud. The most interesting fact is that Spectrum Protect takes care of this task itself — moving the data according to its importance, historical access or other defined policies, and even applying actions to reducing the space required through compression and data deduplication.

The path to the hybrid cloud is the path of the future, and IBM Spectrum Storage is a flexible solution that allows clients to choose the most optimal hardware from any vendor and have access to the data in a safe, efficient and transparent manner, independently of its location in the cloud.

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